Initially, Alexis and I founded Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore because we wanted to draw at it. We’d attended a session or two in NYC, got fired up about it, and then proceeded to sit around for a year waiting for someone to start one in Baltimore. Eventually we gave up and founded it ourselves with the naive thought, “Well, we’ll just set up some chairs, collect money at the door, and then get to sit down and draw with everyone else.”

Little did we know.

Don’t get me wrong, we wouldn’t give up running Dr. Sketchy’s for the world, but of the many great, interesting things that have come about because of it, drawing wasn’t one of them.

So we hit the local art college MICA’s and the local art co-op Creative Alliance’s life-drawing sessions for that missing bit.

This particular model, in the above sketch, walked in to the MICA session, propped up a mountain of pillows and laid down—blocking 1/2 to 3/4 of the room from seeing anything but the upper tip of her elbow. She was the long-pose model, which meant she would be holding that pose for the entire 3 hours.

One of the artists said, “Umm, excuse me, but if you sit like that, most of the room can’t see you.”

She responded, “Tough. That’s how it works, you’ll just have to live with it.” The artist started to respond but she closed here eyes, effectively blocking him out.

She’d actually come by Dr. Sketchy’s a few months earlier wanting to model—when we told her we were too busy trying to start the session (basically running around in frantic “pull-our-hair-out” mode doing the million little things that always need to be done), that she should go read the “Interested in being a model?” page on our website and follow the submission directions, she responded that she already had. (The page specifically says don’t come to Dr. Sketchy’s and try to talk to us about modeling when the session is about to start. We’re just too busy.) She got mad that we couldn’t give her a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the spot and left.

Oh, I should plug the next Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore before I go. Next Dr. Sketchy’s is April 11th with the lovely calendar girls of Team Atomic with all the proceeds going to the Ride for the Feast charity. Drawing, adult beverages, AND doing good deeds. Honestly, what more could you want?

That one kind of reminds me of a fellow I knew back in high school and what he might look like in another decade or two. Maybe. If he’s eating right or something. I don’t know.

This lady was a sign language interpreter at a recent section meeting—it actually looks nothing like her. Three minutes into the drawing someone as tall as a tree sat in front of me. I pretty much had to make up (badly) 75% of the drawing.

One of the speakers at said section meeting. He had a Scottish accent and was a lot more lively than this serene pose indicates.

Last week while dropping off Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore flyers at the Windup Space, I decided to stick around and see the show being set up. Unfortunately, the show was 2 hours away and my phone was dead, so I ended up doodling Russell behind the bar.

The sketch is horrible, but I like the look of it—I might try it again tomorrow night while folks are drawing Paco.

Lastly, an unfinished doodle I did after the Russell doodle—it was cut off by the start of the show.

By the way, if you want to get some cheap life drawing in, and you’re around Baltimore, the next Dr. Sketchy’s is tomorrow night, at the Windup Space with Paco Fish. Doors at 6, start at 7! Whatever you got going on, this is better. Probably. I mean, if it’s your birthday and everyone’s giving you presents, fine. Otherwise, this is better.

First up, here’s the new versions of the first four pages of the comic. Lot of stuff got changed—couple more edits in the text as well.

Page 4 is obviously in progress. Page 3 needs a tie-piece added to the last panel and some wordage to the wine bottle in the first panel.

Next up, some sketches from a Creative Alliance life drawing session. They’re every Saturday at 10, $10 if you’re not a member, $3 if you are.

As usual, the first drawing or two sucked. (Got there at the start of the ten minute poses, 5 minutes into the first pose—it ended before I got too far along.)

Next couple were a little better.

And after that, I was tired/bored, so the last one was crap.

Here’s a tipsy sketch done of a friend while leisurely having a couple beers at the Blarneystone.

BTW, he doesn’t look this rough in real life—I purposefully went that direction since I knew a more nuanced sketch rarely works well in a distracting environment. Oh, and the “light” spots are due to the scanner.

Last up, two doodles from a meeting at work. The first was the usual random junk that gets scribbled during these affairs; the second is an altogether matter. It started as a simple off-hand sketch of a comic-stylized side-view of an eye – and then suddenly the meeting just went on FOREVER. As the meeting dragged on, I absent-mindedly added a detail here, a detail there, and it eventually grew to the point where I ran out of page. I’ll probably put it in Painter sometime this week and see if I can add the bits I wanted to add but couldn’t, since, well, you know, the paper ran out.

Best damn life-drawing you’ll find in town. If I wasn’t helping run it, I’d be there drawing. BTW, check out this LAZERBITCH video if you want a feel for what they’re like. (The Windup Space is in there at the end too.)

1 Picked up _Scarlett_ #1 by Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev about an hour after I finished doing that second page. Maleev’s work inside it is so absolutely amazing that it immediately made me feel about one inch tall. (The issue was also very good – I highly recommend it.)

2 If you look carefully the bar above is the same bar I’ve been tinkering with in Sketchup for over a year now. If you scroll through old posts, you’ll see it all over the place. It’s been heavily modified . . . using the Wacom tablet with Sketchup is almost as much fun as sex. Tasks that used to take ten minutes can be done in seconds. If you have a tablet, you really should download Google Sketchup (it’s free) and fool around with it.

3 I’m not sure, I’m afraid to check, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to change the font size. It looks like it might be too big.

4 The main character should probably be named on page 1, and the bartender by the end of page 2. I’ll probably go back, fix that, and fuss around with the dialogue in general.

Here’s a buch of random doodles from the past couple months or so . . . this was the first of several blue pen sketches done on a notepad during some unit meeting or another. Basically I was letting the sketch go wherever it wanted, then suddenly realized I had to stop since it was unintentionally starting to look pornographic. Oops.

So I drew one of the presenters instead.

And some lady talking about stapler safety or something.

A meeting about lawn mower safety . . .

Next up was an itty-bitty drawing for a cocktail menu for Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore, the burlesque life-drawing class that Alexis and I run. The drawing was originally done in pencil and then was colored in Photoshop.

And here’s what the menu looked like when it was done.

I think we ended up using the menu once and then tossed it. Ohs wells.

Speaking of Sketchy related stuff, here’s the one half drawing I did at Sketchycon up in NYC this year. I got halfway through it and then got distracted talking to other branch heads for the rest of the session. This happened the year before as well – since it’s the first event of Sketchycon, everyone’s so interested in doing the meet & greet that most of the folks never really end up drawing. That, and, well, doing shots with Bill and the bartender.

Next up, a crappy doodle I did on a lunch break while thinking about ideas for a Dr. Sketchy’s flyer.

And last (at least Dr. Sketchy’s-wise) was a sketch I did of Nicolette le Faye that was put in the Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Baltimore’s first ever Art show.

…and that’s the end of all the section/unit/team/group/floor/building/block meeting doodles. Lord. Anyways, a blog post or two back I said I’ve been teaching myself how to oil paint with Corel Painter.

This was posted before, but it should probably go up again.

Initial sketch . . .

That doodle with the arrow on the right is a note telling me to change the nose so he doesn’t look like Snarf from the Thundercats.

Which, APPARENTLY, I ignored. Damnit.

Tomorrow I’ll put up the first two pages of the comic book I spent all day today working on.

Lordy, lots of stuff to post. I’ll just get right to it and skip the usual round of excuses. Things should move faster now though, I’ve got a brand new Mac and I’m attempting to use Painter every day (though I can guarantee you I won’t touch it tomorrow).

Anyways, half this stuff is new, half of it’s old stuff I found in a box while digging for things to put in Evernote.

These are some bar flies drawn at various stages of inebriation (both them and me). They’re at least several years old, if not older.

These next couple are really old. I think the first one was a tonal study for a painting, maybe. It was on an itty-bitty scrap of paper.

Next is a sketch of Kiely which eventually became a source for one of the oil paintings posted earlier in this blog. (The one I’ve actually been occasionally working on in an attempt to complete it.)

Alright, let me dig around and see what I’ve got to put up here. Dr. Sketchy’s has been kicking my ass lately, as has travelling and working on the novel. I’ve been doing a lot of work in Painter, specifically in order to build a website for the novel, but I think I’ll save that for a separate post and just do a generic sketch dump for now.

What do we have….[digging through folders]

Oh, I went to the life drawing session at 11 am on Saturdays at the Creative Alliance. I was impressed . . . it was relaxed atmosphere and a good time. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to get up that early on Saturday, but I’ll definitely do it again.

First sketch was crap . . . enough that it made me scribble some of it out . . .

Obviously not the strongest start.

I really liked that last one . . . so much so in fact, that I’m using it as the base for a painting I’m doing in Painter on the tablet, with the end goal of it being an illustration on the novel website. I’ll show you how far I’ve gotten in that process in a later post though.

Next up, here’s a random doodle I did while some IT guys spent a DECADE installing a piece of software on my work computer that should have taken ten minutes. I could see what they were doing wrong, but they wouldn’t pay attention to me so I was basically forced to doodle and eavesdrop on their technical chatter until I found a manual to read.

Anyway, here’s the doodle. For the life of me I couldn’t find a normal pencil and had to use a green one.

The building in the background is sort of one of the buildings downtown that is visible from my window.

Next up, another work doodle, done several days later while waiting for a unit meeting to start.

I’ve been playing with this sketch in Painter as well. The intention was for it to be the dwarf Donth in the novel, but in my opinion it looks more like Snarf from the Thundercats. Painter improved that a bit, but in the end I’ll probably end up going with something else . . . over the years I’ve gotten into the bad habit of drawing dwarf noses in a certain way which, while pleasing in a comical sense, doesn’t always lend itself to more serious illustrations.

Before the Jason Webley show tonight I should have an hour or so of downtime at the bar next door, so maybe I’ll have a chance to give it another shot.

What is this?

Sketches is a stack of random sketches from the backs of napkins, life-drawing classes (often Dr. Sketchy's), work meetings, airport terminals, and anywhere else I happen to be. Sometimes, though not often, more labored work might make an appearance.